Three Times Sam Vimes Didn't Die
by thewordweaves
Summary: Three occurrences in Vimes' life where he could have died, but came out of it alive, drawing both from the period of time we don't get to see pre-Guards! Guards! and the space between books. Written for a plurk meme.
1. Chapter 1

Sam is very angry. He is angry that the revolution they worked towards failed. He is angry that his friends and the only man who has been anything like a father to him have perished in a useless battle. He is angry that people are lying down to accept the new tyrant without so much of a murmur at the watchmen who fought so hard for those he is still young enough to think of as The People, that they receive no recognition and find themselves dwindling in number. He is angry that he is poor. He is angry that his mother is dying _because_ he is poor and cannot afford what she really needs, which is a house with walls thick enough to block out the cold, blankets to warm her body, good food in her stomach and medicine.

He cannot provide her with anything but love, but he has learned that love doesn't keep anyone alive. What he hasn't quite learned yet is anything beyond the fire of self-righteous fury, has not yet discovered the slow burning rage that comes with despair of twenty years being ground into the dirt by the boot of reality that comes smashing swiftly down upon the dreams of foolish boys hoping for a brighter dawn.

So he drinks. Mum doesn't like it when he drinks - it reminds her of the man that she swears died in an unfortunate cart accident - but she doesn't have to know. He is not a large man, and he hasn't drank many times before. It doesn't take him long to get drunk, which is all very well and good because everyone else in the bar is drunk too. Once the lot of them get chucked out, a scuffle begins. No one's sure why or how (perhaps someone was saying something rude about mothers or specific gods or perhaps even one's choice of drink), but Sam's blood is roaring in his veins and the beast he doesn't know exists yet is stirring within him and he wants to fight something real bad.

That someone turns out to be a man at least ten years his senior. He is backed up into a dirty alley - which is typical for Ankh Morpork, though this one is particularly filthy and Sam is quite sure he is treading in a rancid combination of piss and vomit - and learns the important lesson that anger is not the same as strength. The other man is older, stronger and more skilled, and Sam is soon pressed against the wall, blood dripping from his nose, lip and forehead, hands held out in front of him in some facsimile of a defense. The other man raises one bulky fist (tattoos on his knuckles, Sam notes in a haze of liquor and despair, which is indicative of a real Tough Guy), flings back his grizzled head and falters.

"How old're you, kid?" He grunts.

"Nineteen," Sam says and sniffles miserably, the fire in his veins suddenly replaced with sadness in his heart and a chill in his limbs and a hunger that the drink cannot quench.

"Gods," the man hisses, and puts a hand to his forehead. For a moment, Sam can see someone who is not a simple thug, but a man who has had a hard life, a man that may very well be run over by a cart as it may be any day. "I ain't drunk enough for this. You crying?"

"No," Sam says, because he is.

"I could kill you right now. Got a knife in my boot and everythin'." The man regards him solemnly and scrubs his face with the heels of his hands, which only means that he has successfully spread the grime evenly about his face. "Would anyone miss you?"

"Yeah."

"Who? You got a girl?"

"My mum," Sam says, and looks down at his boots because he's pretty sure what his mum would have to say about this, and if she could lift a finger right now she'd give him a thrashing that would last until next week at least. He doesn't have a girl, because girls aren't interested in skinny, sad excuses for watchmen and he hasn't got the nerve to go to a seamstress like some of the others.

The man groans again, then turns his back. "Go back to yer mum, kid. Get the hell outta my sight. I ain't gonna kill you today."

So he goes and tries to pretend that the shame doesn't burn more than any anger ever could.


	2. Chapter 2

Keel used to tell Vimes that it was wrong to kill, but that if it was either you or the other bloke, you could make an exception. No one would try to hang a watchman trying to defend himself, he reasoned, and besides, staying alive was your first priority. Vimes had always sworn that he'd never have to make that decision, but of course he had to. Everyone in his line of work inevitably did or else they ended up dead.

Oh, most of being a watchman was pointless drudgery. You had loads of paperwork and most nights you spent out in the rain and mist waiting for something to happen which usually ended up being small and petty and stupid. Every once in a while, though, something big happened and you were the only one stupid enough to have a night job here in Ankh Morpork. Vimes knew that some people called Ankh-Morpork the city that never slept, which he supposed was accurate in some ways. But what was more accurate was the fact that people disposed to live life (not without guilt, for they were all guilty) without committing any major crime slept at night and the scum rose to the surface. So to speak.

This was one of those nights. Serial killers weren't too common in Ankh Morpork, despite the general view taken on by those outside of the city. Singular killers were, but not the serial ones. They never lasted long - the city believed in certain principles of revenge amongst the factions that tended to discourage that sort of thing, but they still got the occasional loony who didn't care about the consequences. This one had been targeting seamstresses in particular, much to the astonishment of all who heard about it, because you didn't target the seamstresses unless you had an alarming desire for death. Every watchman was given a brief and likely inaccurate description of the man, but Vimes never expected to see him. That night he was enjoying a quiet rollup tucked well out of the way and hazily watching the seamstress of that particular street lazily stride up and down. His partner (you didn't stay a _live_ watchman without a partner) had dismissed the night as quiet and had gone off to fetch them some pies and any hot beverage he could scrounge up.

Which was when a man who looked like a caller went up to the seamstress and stuck a knife in her belly and before Vimes could reach for his bell like a smart copper, his legs spoke for him and he was running at top speed. The seamstress fell to the ground and the man didn't bother running. He simply regarded Vimes with cold eyes. It didn't take long for Vimes to knock that knife out of his hand, and they engaged in what could only be described as a good old fashioned fight; the killer certainly didn't operate by the Marquis of Fantailler's rules and neither did Vimes. The killer was bigger and stronger, but Vimes was fast and sneaky. By the time the other man swung his fist into Vimes' face, his elbow was already moving to catch his nose, knocking his head upwards so that Vimes could smartly headbutt him.

For a while, the world was simple. There was a killer, and Vimes would try to arrest him before he could be killed. Life operated on a level that only spoke of blood and pain and knees and elbows and fists and boots, all of which nestled into those sensitive bits that only _real_ bastards knew to aim for. Vimes thought he had him when he grabbed onto his hair and slammed the side of his head into a stone wall so hard his temple began to bleed, but he made the mistake of looking into the killer's eyes.

His eyes weren't mad. They were a warm honey brown and filled with fear and desperation and a certain type of frenetic energy Vimes had learned to identify with prisoners that were particularly liable to attempt to kill themselves in the cells. They were the eyes of a man who had hit a wall somewhere in his life and was continuously running into it, practically begging someone to just kill him already because he was as low as anyone could ever get. Then, Vimes felt the tip of a knife open the skin on his side. There were two futures in store here. There was Sam, whose hand would always err on the side of mercy and would attempt to disarm the man and arrest him, the Sam whose blood would be spilled on these dark streets, the Sam who very few people would miss except for to say "poor Sam, good man, should clean up his grave more often shouldn't we?". Then there was Vimes, who knew where to pick his battles and would have blood on his hands but would live another day.

Who needed a sword when you had a knife? Vimes always carried one, and it made an appearance now, digging deep into the killer's throat and traveling up to open up his flesh as one would split a chicken's breast bone. The killer's knife clattered to the ground, and Vimes stared silently at the man thrashing on the ground, aghast at the way he screamed and writhed and howled. He hadn't managed to cut a _vital_, he realized and bent down to put him out of his misery.

When Vimes' partner came back he started in shock but, in show of typical watchman priorities, did not drop the pies or the drinks. By that point, the killer lay still on the cobbles and the blood rushed through it with the help of the rain.

"Cor!" His partner, Sidney, exclaimed. "Issat the killer they were talking about?"

"I think so," Vimes said, swallowing hard.

"Good work!" Sidney said, and thumped Vimes on the back. "They'll give you a medal for this for sure - hey can you say that I was here too when they do? Y'know, helping out. Here, you want some hot cocoa? Their coffee looked right rotten but you can't go wrong with cocoa. Even the wife can't go wrong with it, and she can ruin _bacon_."

Vimes stared at the cocoa, then looked down at the corpse. "Er. Yeah. All right, give it here."

He never did get that medal.


	3. Chapter 3

More than one person had told Vimes that the drink would kill him one day. This was a fact that he knew quite well if he was completely honest with himself, but he couldn't rouse up the energy to care overly much. He had woken up several times with some kind soul, some seamstress or bartender tipping him onto his side and letting him know that he could have died that night if not for their interference. Never stopped him from going off and getting drunk again. He figured if the drink didn't kill him, general bad living would, or some criminal he managed to catch, and who was he to dictate the way he died? He believed that the world was, in its infinite mysteries that he didn't care to contemplate for lack of schooling and philosophy to draw upon and for lack of religion to give him strength, essentially random. Things just happened. Usually to him. He drank to forget, after all. It was easy to forget about death so long as you drank enough. The tricky bit was that you could never drink enough to make death forget about you.

After his shift was over, he found his feet taking him along the familiar path to the pub. He sat wordlessly down into the seat that had long since been designated as his, and his usual was placed in front of him just as it always was. Nothing particularly bad had happened today, but Vimes didn't need something to happen to want to drink anymore. It was as if instead of developing a habit for drink, drink had formed a habit for him, which was fine by him. If there was liquor in the area, chances were it would end up in his hand and shortly afterwards would end up in his stomach.

Except this time, before taking his first swig, he stopped. This was not something he could remember happening in the past. He drank to forget, but now all he could see in his mind's eye was Sybil, staring sadly at him. She never complained, after all. Probably too classy to complain, he figured. But she looked disappointed, and that was always worse. Of course, he could always drink away his disappointment, but he was startled to realize that for the first time in a long time, he didn't want to forget. For the first time in a long time, he had something worth remembering. He wanted to remember Sybil Ramkin, the woman he had ceased to think of as mad, and instead had begun to think of as an endless fountain of good cheer, empathy, class and warmth that enveloped everything around her, the woman that had somehow seen something in him that no one else could, including himself. Sure, she was eccentric and he practically had to stand on tip toes to look her properly in the eye and her obsession with swamp dragons probably bordered on unhealthy, but that didn't make a damn difference in the grand scheme of things, whatever that may be.

He put down the drink and said, "I'm leaving."

"What, without drinking that?" The bartender asked, bewildered. "You? Well, you've still got to pay."

Fiddling with his coin purse quite ruined the drama of the moment, but the bit of him that wasn't longing for that drink (which was admittedly most of him) was still rather proud of himself. He walked up the winding pathway to Lady Sybil's great big manor and the door was flung open for him. "Why Captain," Sybil said, blinking at him because evidently that was how _classy_ people showed surprise instead of gaping like Vimes usually did. "You're an hour early. Is something the matter?"

"Er. You said something before. A few times, actually - about meetings?"

"You're going to have to do better than that," Sybil said crisply.

"Ah. Yes. Meetings about, er, the drink. I was... thinking about going to one."

And then Sybil beamed at him, and her smile was just as big as the rest of her.

He never did give up the philosophy that life was ultimately a culmination of random happenings or the idea that he could die tomorrow, but he decided that maybe he did care how he went out after all.


End file.
